After very
filling Breakfast at the Hillcrest Bed and Breakfast, we headed to The Frank
Slide Interpretative Center to see the Frank Slide – a slide of a mountain in
the Crowsnest Pass, on the boundary between Alberta and BC.
The museum was
fascinating, showing the geology of the mountains, the folding mountains, the
fault mountains and the “sliding” mountains, and then there was some mountains,
like the Frank Slide, that both were folded and sliding, and then eroding, causing
openings in the earth’s crust. The cracks fill with water and then that becomes ice – and then …….
First
Nations People called this the mountain of movement, and they never camped
under it. The white man maybe never heard these stories, and probably would
never have listed to them anyways.
So the 29th
April 1903, at 4 in the morning, the crack opened. The town of Frank (600
people) was partially wiped away. Two
kilometers of the road was buried. Two
kilometers of the railway was buried.
With 300 meters of rocks. 90+ people were buried. Families were buried,
siblings, husbands, wives, children, animals were buried.
A
beautiful, interactive museum, with walkways, views, exhibitions. Two movies,
one about the slide and the destruction of the town and people. The other of
the lives, and working conditions in the coal mines. They but when they got
here their lives were struggles. were promised work – go west young men, take
your families, Sometimes they never hit the coal – then you got no money.
No bears
yet – only a gopher snake that can pretend to be a rattlesnake. Dears in the garden this morning. Svend is
very disappointed.
We also
heard about the Hillcrest Mining accident killing 189 in 1913. I thouhht a very
poor cemetery, a memorial that had not much to do with what I think of as the
coal mine, the workers. But again - they did not ask us.
And then we
drove out of the mountains and onto the plains – saw a bunch of buffaloes
(well, Svend said they were, I think that they were cows- or maybe horses?) and
then windmills – thousands of them.
Beginning to see the layers of blue mountains, and the flat grassy prairies.
Head
Smashed in Buffalo Jump museum – 1 hour
from the Frank Slide.
There was a
tme when there were no windmills, and when there was budffalo – bison. There
was 40 – 50 million of them before the white man came. The Indians used every
part of their body. The bones for tools, the skins for clothing and tents, the fat for lamps and
oil. The white men started capturing them
for fun, or just to use their fur. They would kill them and just let
them lie there to die. All the buffalo disappeared. Almost.
But they
have been here for so long – not just 5000 years, but for even longer.
They had
different methods of killing the buffalo. Spears, hunting them at the water
holes where the bison had to come daily. Butthey also used the Head Smashed In
Buffalo Jump method.
dFor some
reason there was 1000 yeas it did not get used. NOone knows why. But they would
wait until the day was right, the wind, the people, and they would prepare.
Sing. Dance. Buld “diving lanes” with were long lanes leading towards the cliff.
On each edge, they would build cairns, and put sticks and branches in them. The
bison had poor eyesight.
The young
runners would sneak up on them, gather them
in the lane that now was lined with people holding huge buffalo hides
(the buffaloes had very poor eyesight) so the buffaloes would jstart running
after the runner. Who led them to the cliff. Just meters befor the cliff, the
runner would jump nto the side. The buffaloes had no way of stopping but poured
over the side of the cliff. They fell all
the way to the bottom of the cliff. Maybe 10 meters, or even more. Because tere
are so many bones and earth piled up now, that are layers and layers deep.
The buffalo
were wounded or died. There were hunters that
killed the ones that were wounded.
Nw there are only half a million left.
And then Waterton - fanatastic!.
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